Headlines from the last seven days
1 CLIMATE CRISIS
Deadly humid heat will spread rapidly at 2C rise
Life-threatening periods of high heat and humidity will spread rapidly across the world with only a small increase in global temperatures, a study has found.
The extremes, which can be fatal to healthy people within six hours, could affect hundreds of millions of people unused to such conditions. The study used a limit based on experiments showing that when combined heat and humidity, as measured by so-called wet bulb temperature, passes 31.5C, the body is no longer able to cool itself. Without cooling aids, such as cold water, fans or air conditioning, death is likely within hours.
The research analysed data from thousands of weather stations across the world to show that 4% had already experienced at least one six-hour period of this extreme heat stress since 1970, with the frequency of such events in places such as the Gulf in the Middle East, the Red Sea and the North Indian Plain doubling by 2020. The analysis shows that extreme heat stress will spread rapidly to other regions with global heating of only 2C, meaning more than 25% of the weather stations would suffer the extreme heat stress once a decade on average.
2 GREECE
Search for survivors of worst ever storm continues
Rescuers in central Greece were last weekend still trying to locate people trapped in villages deluged by flood
